But the litigation will continue for decades. The government and the big defense contractors are still fighting over the A-12 project.
The Navy's A-12 was canceled 20 years ago, which is not to be confused with the CIA's A-12 that was the precursor to the SR-71. The A-12 was supposed to be a flying wing, like a miniature B-2. Except that it went way over budget, the program got into trouble and it was canceled by the Secretary of Defense, who was some bureaucrat by the name of Cheney. The government wanted a bunch of the money back from the contractors, who sued.
The case has been dragging on ever since.
Cat Pawtector!
5 hours ago
2 comments:
They were cute! I'm sure the admirals got warm spreading feelings over the thought of stacking 200 of those in a hangar deck.
Nangleator, the wet-brains really didn't want the thing in the first place, what they wanted was some reliable bomb truck capable of long distant flight. The resulting F/A-18 Super Hornet is 1/4th the price of what the A-12 would have been, carries more bombs for longer distances than the A-12 would have carried, is probably 1/10th the maintenance costs (it was built to be really cheap to maintain with much commonality of maintenance parts with other U.S. fighter jets), and given the problems with the naval F-35, will likely be the front-line fighter-bomber on U.S. carriers for the next twenty years. Pretty darn impressive for a fighter jet brought into service as a "stopgap" after the cancellation of the A-12...
- Badtux the Flightless Penguin (SIIiiiiigh!).
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